Out Laith, Rivock Oven, Dirk Hill Sike, Black Pots: poetic names in an ancient area of Silsden

The public bridleway through the commercial forest at Rivock Edge skirts an area rich in pre-history. There is evidence of Bronze Age travellers and in and beyond the plantation there are rocks with cup-and-ring markings. 

Atmospheric stretches of the wood are interspersed with glades. Rivock Oven, a sort of chamber of rock (marked as a cave on maps) is in this vicinty. The bridleway, used by walkers, runners, cyclists and horse riders, hugs the conifer plantation boundary between the television relay station and the farmhouse at Black Pots, which has a colourful history going back more than 400 years. 

 The plantation floor is densely carpeted by conifer needles. 

In addition to the bridleway, there is a public footpath through the wood on the flanks of Rombalds Moor. The entire wood is private land. An Ordnance Survey map is an essential aid to walking here and over the rough moorland bounded by Silsden Road, Ghyll Grange, Doubler Stones and Black Pots.   

Distant view of Silsden from the bridleway near the Stanza Stone where significant hillside felling has taken place, revealing an outcrop of millstone grit.  The ruin in the foreground on the right is Out Laith. Nearby, Dirk Hill Sike, which rises in the plantation, forms a ruggedly attractive valley replete with modest waterfalls. Passing beneath Lumb Bridge, the sike (a small stream) flows into Holden Beck through Jacobs Wood.